Can it be that people have not room to live in this beautiful world, under this measureless, starry heaven? Can feelings of enmity, vengeance, or lust to destroy one's fellow beings, retain their hold on man's soul amid this enchanting Nature? All that is evil in man's heart should, one would think, vanish in contact with Nature--this immediate expression of beauty and goodness. From the very start we find Tolstoy hampered in his work by that incubus of all Russian writers, the Censor. In a letter to his brother Sergius in May he writes: '_Childhood_ was spoilt, and _The Raid_ simply ruined by the Censor. All that was good in it has been struck out or mutilated.' In comparing Tolstoy's literary achievement with that of Western writers, one should make a large allowance for the continual annoyance, delay, mutilation, and suppression inflicted on him by that terrible satellite of despotism. 1853 In January, the battery in which Leo Tolstoy served went on active service against Shámyl. The expedition assembled at Fort Grózny, where scenes of debauchery occurred. On 18th February Tolstoy's life was in great danger. A shell fired by the enemy smashed the carriage of a cannon he was pointing. Strange to say he was not even wounded. On 1st April he returned with his detachment to Starogládovsk; and in May we find him writing to his brother Sergius that he had applied for his discharge, and hoped in six weeks' time to return home a free man. Difficult as his admission to the army had been, he found, however, that to retire was a yet harder matter, destined to take not weeks but years. On 13th June his life was again in danger owing to an adventure which supplied him with the subject he utilised later on in _A Prisoner in the Caucasus_.